By Kristin

It's been a tough year, and also a good year. 

I always give my students a final letter.  For a few years it didn't change much.  This year it did, perhaps because I'm leaving high school after eight years and returning to middle school, where I'll teach 7th grade LA/SS.  I realize that I have not yet mastered every piece of advice in the letter, so I suppose I need to listen to my own self and get better at some things.  Many things, if I'm going to be fully honest.

It's long – and isn't really a blog post because there's no hyperlink – but here it is, because for all I'm supportive of testing and use of data and I have high expectations that teachers use class time academically, at the end of the day I think I teach this stuff more than I teach reading and writing.  And where's the test that can measure whether or not I did it effectively?

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By Kristin

Dave Eggers is smarter, a better writer, and more successful than I am.  Plus, he has better hair.  It's hard not to hate him just a little, under all my love, admiration and gratitude.

And now he and Ninive Clements Calegar (who also has better hair than I do) have said what I want to say, but a thousand times better, and via the New York Times.

I'd throw my laptop against the wall in jealousy, but I need to make a quick donation to 826 Seattle – an amazing tutoring spot for kids.  A FREE tutoring spot.  Go Dave, Go.  And thank you.

By Kristin

The New York Times reveals the concern some feel about how little American students know about civics.  On a test given by the Department of Education, students did a pretty poor job of demonstrating mastery of "how government is financed, what rights are protected by the Constitution and how laws are passed."  Sandra Day O'Connor calls this a "crisis."

I call it a crisis too, but for different reasons.

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 By Kristin

Sound Transit is considering providing curriculum to K-12 classrooms in an effort to create more riders for their "$2.6 billion Central Link light-rail line that opened in 2009 between Seattle's Westlake Center and the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport," according to the Seattle Times.

I am hugely in favor of mass transit, except when I'm in favor of bikes.  I think people should use cars for long, rare trips – to see Grandma and Poppa Duane in Omaha while also learning about the Oregon Trail, for example, or perhaps for touring wine country.  If one can piggy back on the other, hey, that's efficient driving!

And I support Sound Transit.  I'd like to see the Puget Sound region continue to develop mass transit routes.  But I'd like to see them develop routes people use.  How many people want to go from Westlake Center to SeaTac?  Not enough, apparently.  Perhaps running a line that people really used would have been the smarter option, but Washington tends to vote dumb when it comes to mass transit, and we end up with tiny streetcar lines that quaintly carry you a block or two, and train lines that go from the mall to the airport.  

Sound Transit's idea to develop curriculum that will get "into kids' consciousness and make them more likely to be future transit riders," according to the staffer leading the effort, aren't okay with me.  I'd much rather they put taxpayer money into developing curriculum that creates voters who can see past the next year or two, so that we end up with a transit system that does more than get you to the airport the two times a year you need to make that trip.

Class time is pretty valuable.  Kids lose it for vision, scoliosis, hearing, testing, assemblies, fundraisers, and all the other nuts and bolts of a public institution.  Given that we cannot assume families are educating their children, or are able to assist in the education of their children, I'm pretty adamant that class time not become a route for free marketing.

I'm sure the Sound Transit materials will be available on a teacher-choice option, and I definitely won't be choosing to use them, but I'm unhappy that a publicly-funded company would consider advertising to public school students.  Public schools are not an affordable, conveniently-efficient marketing opportunity.  They're being told they have to be many things – therapists, health centers, parents, an end to hunger, babysitters – and all of that on top of educating, but they shouldn't also be asked to be free advertising.
 

By Kristin

Increasing class size in public education, something recently recommended by Bill Gates to the National Governor’s Association, would be a big mistake.  Keeping class size at a level that allows for relationships, communication with parents, and timely feedback to students is necessary if we want public schools to educate our neediest children.
 
My own classes in a public Seattle high school have had between 30 and 36 students.  With 36 students in a 50 minute period, I have 1.39 minutes for each child.  I don’t spend class checking in with each child for 1.39 minutes, but that startling number is evidence of what happens when classes are allowed to get too large – there is not enough time for each child.
 
The problem with increasing class size in public education as a way to save money is that a teacher, no matter how good she is, can stretch the day only so far.
 
With 150 students a day, if I assign a piece of writing I have 150 essays to grade.  If I move really fast (and not very carefully), spending five minutes on each essay, I will be grading for 12.5 hours.  Teachers all across the country do this, but how many could do more than that?
 
Providing meaningful and timely feedback becomes problematic when class size increases, but so does solving the riddle of how to teach each child.
 
This year I am teaching honors level language arts.  My students are ready to learn every day and want to do well in school.  The students in my class of 34 are doing great, as would be the children at Lakeside were their classes increased to 34. 
 
In past years, when I taught standard-level classes, having 34 children was a problem.  One year I had a tenth grader I’ll call S, who couldn’t read.  I spent my prep period reading his file and learned he missed most of second grade because his mother was an addict and didn’t get him to school.  That explained a lot.  Second grade is a big phonics year and one that is crucial for reading, so I focused instruction to help S with phonics.  I designed extra work for him, changed daily lessons to help him with his specific needs, and tutored him during lunch. 
 
S was one of 40 children that year who were reading and writing below grade level.  I spent many hours reading files, examining data and tutoring during lunch.  I spent hundreds of hours working with those children and their parents, and even then I did not get those children where I wanted them.  Most of the time had to be spent outside of class because, of course, I had only a minute or two for each child during class.
 
While I had 40 students performing below grade level I also had 110 students performing at grade level, and they too wanted my attention – to ask for help during class, to visit during lunch, to have me write a letter of recommendation, to have their existence acknowledged and to be made to feel important.  As the parent of a child in public school, I know how much a teacher’s attention means to a student.  I don’t want my students to get less of me, and I don’t want my daughter to get less of her teacher.  One cannot simultaneously support public education and reduce the amount of attention each child gets from her teacher.
 
Good teachers make great sacrifices for their students, but even good teachers run out of time.  Increasing class size means there will be children whose riddles are not solved, who do not receive extra instruction or personalized curriculum, and who have teachers unable to find an hour to pick up a book and read about how to improve their craft.  It’s not that most teachers don’t want to make time, it’s that there isn’t enough time in the day. 
 
While it’s true that simply reducing class size will not improve achievement, increasing class size hurts those teachers who are already working hard to help children, despite Mr. Gates’s plan to increase the class sizes of exactly those teachers.  There are many places to reduce spending in public education, but lifting the cap on class size shouldn’t be one of them.

By Kristin

To the left, Senator McCarthy – not a shining example of how to bring out the best in people.

As you may know, Seattle has been in the news lately for unethical behavior in our accounting department.  Folks have fled to Florida, folks have been fired with a handsome severance.  We've lost our Superintendent in the process, a woman whose vision I admired, and somehow we've become a district that models our process for ensuring ethical behavior on the McCarthy Hearings.

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By Kristin

Dear Jim,

Your report wandered a bit, and I'm not sure where you got that fabulous "the same number went from here to there as there to here!" detail – the footnote didn't say.

If this paper had been written in my class, I probably would have conferenced with you, asked you to clarify, and encouraged you to work through a few more drafts.  It's clear that you don't think the National Board bonus has done what it set out to do, and isn't worth any more money (shame on so many teachers for going after it, anyhow!), but your paper doesn't prove that to me.

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By Kristin

Natalie Munro, a Pennsylvania teacher who has said uncomplimentary things about her students on a blog – a personal blog, one unaffiliated with her job – has been busted.

Natalie's story made me think of how we're more comfortable tearing down than building up, how we expect parents to make our lives easier, and how we so readily wave the superhero cape but don't often put it on and get to work.  After all, we're not superheroes.  We can't fly.  We would be fools to believe we could.

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By Kristin

I've got a problem.  The previous owners of our house didn't seal this window enough.  Luckily, there's this – my chop saw.  

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By Kristin

Like many other Washington parents, in the fall I checked my daughter's MAP scores.  The test, the Measurement of Academic Progress, is Washington's best bet for measuring teacher impact because it's given in the fall, the winter, and the spring.

At least, a few weeks ago I thought it was the best tool.  Now I'm not so sure.

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